Game On! An Industrys Journey Vicarious Visions, Inc. Karthik - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Game On! An Industry’s Journey

Vicarious Visions, Inc. Karthik Bala, CEO Guha Bala, President

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About Vicarious Visions

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A Leading developer of video games

– Headquartered in Albany, NY, with 140 employees – Founded in 1994 by brothers Guha Bala and Karthik Bala – In January 2005, VV was acquired by Activision, Inc. – the second largest publisher of video games in the world 

Market Success

– 25 million games sold worldwide – Generated nearly $1 Billion in retail sales! 

Activision

– Founded in 1979 – one of the first video game publishers – Annual sales over $1.5BB US

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About Vicarious Visions

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Multi-platform Development – handheld and console

– PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii – Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable

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Strong Entertainment Brands & Partnerships

– Shrek, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Transformers, Spongebob, Finding Nemo, Doom 3 and many others. – Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney, Lucasfilm, Sony Pictures, Marvel

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Our People

– World class creative and technical talent – Diverse skill sets and backgrounds

• Programmers, artists, writers, designers, musicians, producers
• Recruited from around the world

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Our Code

– ~20,000 lines of code in our games in 2000 – >1 Million lines of code in our games this year

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Games have grown up

Released in 1972 Simplistic games made from fundamentally few mechanics

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Games have grown up

35 Years Later…

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Niche to Mainstream

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Games for every audience

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Games are everywhere

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The industry has grown up

 Cottage industry  Large, specialized global businesses

– Space Invaders

• A single programmer
• Distributed as a stand alone cabinets
• Lines of code: ~400 lines of code; Data size: <10KB

– Spider-Man Movie 3

• Team of ~300 (25% programmers, 40% artists, 20% designers, 5% audio,

10% production management)

• 4+ million units distributed worldwide, with $25+MM consumer marketing

spend

• Lines of code: > 2 million; Data size: ~10 GB

 Hobbyist talent  Specialized labor

– Early games developed by simple teams of programmers and artists – Today, teams have more formally trained talent pool: programming and art training a must, and ongoing. Many have advanced degrees.

 Industry that generates $35BB in total worldwide sales. In the US,

$16BB  greater than movie box office receipts

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Playing to win: success factors

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Great games that culturally resonate

– Revenue and profits heavily correlate to top few titles – A fashion driven business

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Timing in the marketplace

– Rigid market windows

• Holiday: 60% of sales comes between October and December
• Major movies releases
• Shelf space and marketing committed much in advance

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Low defect rate

• Handheld and console games cannot be patched
• Games have rigorous standards for manufacturer approval

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A Talent Driven Business

– Projects that offer creative and commercial impact – Quality workplace

Sustainable delivery in this environment is very valuable

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Opportunity knocks: 2002/2003

 CNK opportunity

– Another project slipped, $50MM hole in the forecast – Customer asked us to pull in the date by 1 year and add PS2 and X-Box – In retrospect a crazy decision

 Shipped on-time, Holiday 2003 to commerical success

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Success paid for in blood

 Burnout  Difficult work

conditions

 Attrition  Endemic to games

industry

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Opportunity to do better

 Spider-Man 2 for NDS

– 5 months cycle – New technology – Hardware launch – Movie-tie in (DVD launch window)

 Better methodology  better

products, better quality of life

– Software – Production

 Became the #2 title for the

platform in 2004  big success

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Method in our madness

 TSP/PSP

– Initial rollout: PSP software training for programmers 2 1 week courses – External coaching for Spidey 2 NDS

 Capability training

– Project management – Leadership development

 Upstream QA

– Formation of early and mid stage QA effort

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What’s worked

Launches Team formation Quality owners Use of historical data for scoping

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 Planning techniques favor understood development methodology

– Game development is iterative and values qualitative judgment of completion – Rework for purpose of polish increases game quality. Traditional TSP correlates rework with defects.

• EV often confounded by iteration

 Training methodology tailored for programmers: we are in a software

business, but the techniques need to be accessible for non-software people

– Makes buy-in more challenging – Leads to lower participation in the technique

 Available tools are cumbersome for re-planning

Challenges

Result: Conclusions from data are inconclusive or inaccessible

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Challenges

 External forces:

– Licensors, subcontracts, other suppliers are not process compliant … so significant inputs are left outside the TSP process

 Our mistake: large scale change implemented

without bulletproofing  led to significant perception that process is burdensome

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Replay: iterate and improve

 Tools: developing on the Dashboard  Process: experimentation with SCRUM for early

iterative prototyping. TSP for more structured development phase. Working on combining the techniques

 Training: adapting PSP training for broader

audiences

 Staff support: relieving the tool and data

manipulation burden from team members

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Looking ahead…

 Lessons not just for games

– Era of Digital Entertainment

• Fusion of technology and creativity
• Applicable to movie making, television, online,

music - any form of digital media

 Talent pool is diverse, and huge  Improvements will have far-reaching

benefits

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Our call to action …

 We’re broadening the reach of games … new experiences, new audiences - worldwide.  The technology that’s drives this is growing ever more complex  We must also broaden the way our project management methods engage technical and creative talent to achieve greater and sustainable success.